Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day028.19
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25
MR IRVING: He is also a publisher.
MR RAMPTON: He may also be a publisher but that is by the way
for present purposes. Dr Spranger I think is lawyer both
for Mr Irving and for Christian Worch.
MR IRVING: My Lord, will you let me re-cross on this?
. P-176
MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a new document and I will, yes.
MR RAMPTON: Yes. Is there any significance in the date, do
you think, Professor Funke, of 30th January?
A. In the circumstances of the court issue, of course, it is
a day when Adolf Hitler got into power in 1933.
MR IRVING: I do not see the date. Where is the date?
MR RAMPTON: The 30th January 1991.
MR IRVING: The letter is dated?
MR RAMPTON: Yes, 30th January 1991. The temperature, in which
we may be interested, was 28 degrees centigrade or
Celsius, perhaps that does not matter. We have left that
off the translation.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you have not, you have just put it on the
next line.
MR RAMPTON: Sorry. I do not know what the message was to
which this was a reply, but plainly, you may think,
Dr Funke, it is what one might call a scenario draft,
whatever you call it, for a speech, because what the third
line says in English is, or an article it might be, I do
not know: "The topic will be Germany's new role as great
power", is that right?
A. Right.
Q. If you want to follow in German, please do, beginning:
"I come late but honestly. Furthermore, I intend" --
this is not supposed to be literary, so Mr Irving may not
like it -- "Furthermore, I intend initially to point to my
. P-177
prophecy of 3.10.89!" Why, in your view, Dr Funke, the
exclamation mark behind the date?
A. Because a year later there was a formal unification act at
3rd October '90. Maybe this is the reason.
Q. Am I right that Adolf Hitler made a speech in the
Reichstag, a rather famous speech, on 30th January 1939?
A. Oh, yes.
Q. And did he in that speech repeat what he had said on the
3rd October 1989 -- I mean ----
A. Oh, yes.
Q. No, let us start again. In 1938?
MR IRVING: I hope it gets better than this.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, Mr Irving.
MR RAMPTON: Well, I think it does, if I may say so.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I hope so.
MR RAMPTON: Start again. There was a famous speech by Adolf
Hitler on 30th January 1939 in the Reichstag?
A. Yes.
Q. Did he in that speech repeat something he had said on 3rd
October 1938?
A. He referred to if there is a war then this will cause much
damage to the Jews.
Q. Is it unfair in the light of these dates to see Mr Irving
standing in one of those smart Nazi uniforms while he
makes this prophecy?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we will move on.
. P-178
MR RAMPTON: I will go on. I want to be serious now.
MR IRVING: In view of the fact that I have hurried through my
own cross-examination in order to make space for
re-examination, I am beginning to regret it.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us move on anyway.
MR RAMPTON: "Made at a press conference in Berlin, namely that
Germany would be reunited within 12 months", and that is a
prophecy which came true. "My reputation as prophet being
confirmed, I will allow myself some prognoses for the
coming five, ten, fifteen years. Within these I see the
possibility of a conversion of the Austrian economy to
German marks, a political drawing together of the German
speaking peoples of Europa" or Europe?
A. Europe.
Q. "The emergence of a German economic community with an
incredible potential for the German mark within the next
ten years, with the possibility of gradually outplaying
the EEC. Germany would use this economic power in order
to help the backward countries in the East of Europe,
therefore expand a kind of German empire", "imperium"
I think is the word?
A. Yes.
Q. "In the East. The German economic hegemony would then, in
the course of ten to twenty years, extend to Poland, the
Ukraine, White Russia and the original German sphere of
interest the Baltic States. Within the framework of a
. P-179
just settlement with Warsaw, in which the partial
repayment of the Polish debts should play a not
insignificant role, it would result in a return of the
German Eastern territories, only sparsely settled by Poles
anyway. In the framework of a partnership with the Russia
people, but mind you not the criminal Soviet
government" -- January 1991? Well, never mind. "It would
also result in a blossoming of the Russian economy and a
return of Kalingrad and Northeast Prussia to Germany. In
this context the events in Latvia play a role that can
barely be overestimated".
Assume, if you will, Dr Funke for the moment
that that was going to form the topic of an article or a
speech amongst one of these right-wing groups in Germany,
how do you calculate its likely popularity?
A. I mean because of the subtle strategical tone in this
piece, it may be perceived as a kind of authoritative
speech to this audience, because what is done in this
piece is to take the economic strategies, the economic
widening of the influence of the German mark area, to get
to a political resettling of borders and this is the point
that people of that kind of camp are interested in, you
know, to re-arrange the borders in Eastern and near
Eastern, central East Europe, and using conflicts between
the ethnics, different ethnics with respect to the German
ethnic interests or resettling aspects. So this is to the
. P-180
core of those activism of right-wingers in the early 90s.
Q. Then I will in the light of that answer show you, if
I may, the Halle transcript. I am afraid here we have not
had time to transcribe the German, but we have translated
it directly off the tape on to the page, which clever
people can do.
MR IRVING: Is this my transcript or your transcript?
MR RAMPTON: No, this is one we did last night directly from
the tape. I have already said.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are we going to put this, Mr Rampton?
MR RAMPTON: It maybe could go no the Worch section of RWE 2
which is section 11 I think.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: If somebody can provide the page?
MR RAMPTON: 26A and B.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: 26A, yes.
MR RAMPTON: I would like you, Dr Funke, it is was done very
quickly, I know, we have not got the German, but I would
like you to look at the bottom of the page seven lines up,
at the end of line he says: "I as an Englishman", have
you got that?
A. Yes.
Q. "I as an Englishman must say I am really jealous of what
will happen to Germany in the next five or ten or fifteen
years", remember those figures?
A. Yes.
Q. Then in brackets applause?
. P-181
A. Yes.
Q. Does the applause in this context for these sorts of
words, does the applause surprise you or not?
A. Does it?
Q. Does the applause surprise you or not?
A. No.
Q. "In the next ten years you will get back the
(unintelligible word) Eastern areas which today
(unintelligible phrase). You will probably gain the
financial, the economic hegemony over all the previously
lost countries of the former Soviet empire. The
Germans ... apparent cut, there you have to be careful
because then the foreign countries, then the western
powers, will do everything to prevent this happening, even
when today the Federal Chancellor Kohl speaks about
apparent cut, the future of England can only be secured in
common friendship with the new Germany. In this sense
I stand by the parole, we might say the phrase, Germany
first, cheers and shouts of sieg heil".
MR IRVING: "First" is wrong. It is "forward".
MR RAMPTON: "Germany forwards". Are you reading on? Then
Worch makes an appreciative speech. How do you
characterize, Professor Funke, those kinds of sentiments
to an audience of this nature?
A. It plays with this greater Germany feelings of that kind
of people. Clearly it refers before to the matter of the
. P-182
Third Reich, the so-called matter of the Third Reich, to
Rudolf Hess, a man of peace, who did the peace, according
to Irving, with England, so then there is a reference to
the joint, you know, venture he is up to between the white
England and the white dominated or what have you Germany
to have a hegemony over the always criticised East, the
Bolshevik and post-Bolshevik East. It is alluding to the
former critics to the Soviet empire. There you have again
these kind of ideas how to manage it to have this greater
Germany. It includes a kind of implication that this
cannot be without very intense conflicts with the western
Allies or Western nations in the whole. So this is a
phrase that also you have again and again, that there will
be some kind of conflict, even war, be it internally or be
it internationally, and here you have a kind of subtle
hint that they will do it, the bigger Germany, the greater
German activists will do it, and it will cause conflicts
with the Western nations. I have to say as a political
scientist that of course the border thing in Europe of 89
follows, is one of the most debated and dangerous things
we have, and this is true, as you know, also for the last
century. Gottfried Kussel, for example, said in this very
Halle, you know, meeting just before this event happened
that, if it is necessary, I do not want it, but if it is
necessary, we will have an internal war; we will have a
civil war in these countries, and as an Austrian he refers
. P-183
to Germany and Austria.
So you have this kind of war-mongering or at
least implicationing of wars in this whole right-wing
extremist utterances.
Q. Thank you. There is only one other thing about this
script or transcript, translation. On the second page it
says: "The future of England can only be secured in common
friendship with the new Germany." You talked about the
white England. Am I right, correct me if my history is
wrong, did Hitler have an idea that England was the
repository of some kind of pure Aryan race with whom he
would like to be friends?
A. Yes, it was always his wavering not to be faced with a war
with Great Britain, and in that sense these kind of white
Aryan feelings are widespread also during the Nazi period
and especially Hitler himself.
Q. Just before we leave this document which representing
Mr Irving's words we think in Halle in 1991, just look at
the top of the page. In the light of the answers you gave
earlier, well, we start at the top of Mr Irving's speech:
"My dear Germans, I have known you for 30 years since
I worked here for a year as steelworker in West Germany,
and I as the first historian in the world wrote a book
about the destruction of the German city, the middle
German city Dresden, therefore, I have no fear to write
the truth about what we, the English, committed against
. P-184
the German people in terms of war crimes during the Second
World War. I welcome it." Then there is applause and
cheers. Does that surprise you, Professor Funke?
A. No, not at all. It shows, especially for these people, a
clear identification with this kind of greater Germany
thing, this kind of Nazi past, the past of heroic things,
whereas, so to speak, those who realize the reasons of the
more political and military defeat of national socialism,
they in a way say in different forms, that of course this
Second World War by Churchill and the Americans, and even
the Soviets, had to be done to crush Adolf Hitler down.
This is, so to speak, the alternative level consensus of
postwar Germany.
Q. Thank you.
A. Only because of that, just to put another sentence to it,
only because of this defeat there was a chance to rebuild
democracy, and that means especially the recognition of
human dignity of the basic human rights.

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